This section is intended to provide a background or context to the disclosed embodiments. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and other content. These systems may be multiple-access communication systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access communication systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems (including 3GPP systems), and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal, or user equipment (UE), communicates with one or more base stations through transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the user equipment, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the user equipment to the base stations. This communication link can be established through a single-in-single-out (SISO), multiple-in-single-out (MISO) or a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system.
In some wireless communication systems, such as LTE Advanced (LTE-A) systems, two or more base stations (or eNodeBs) may cooperate with one another to increase the effective communication range of the wireless network and/or to improve the quality of received and transmitted signals. In the downlink, a user equipment can benefit from transmissions that can originate from any one of a plurality of eNodeBs that are in communication with one another. Further, in some scenarios, a user equipment can receive multiple coordinated downlink transmissions, which after further processing, can produce signals of superior quality.